June 23, 2011
Abbas - Palestinian Authority
"Oh no! I can't say those six words .. !!"
CHALLAH @ The Simon Wisenthal Center
Six words must be said before there can ever be peace in the Middle East that could change the entire trajectory of the Holy Land, from ongoing terrorism and the ever-present threat of war to the chance for two States thriving side by side.
They are “I will accept a Jewish State.” And if Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would utter those six words, this would be a very different campaign.
Palestinian children are learning from textbooks that teach virulent hatred of Israel and its Jewish citizens…streets in the Palestinian territories are named after ‘martyrs’ who died while murdering and maiming innocent Israeli men women and children…and anti-Jewish slanders that would have made Hitler proud appear on Palestinian television and Internet sites.
Yet, Israel is the one vilified and demonized to make concessions that no other nation would ever agree to.
World leaders including President Obama may insist Israel-Palestinian peace talks must restart and yield quick results, but the road to peace is not by insisting negotiations start from the pre-1967 lines but by the Palestinian leader President Mahmoud Abbas declaring to his people, to Arab and Muslim nations – to the entire world – that his people will accept the Jewish State of Israel as their legitimate, permanent neighbor.
As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last month, “Those six words will change history. They will make clear to the Palestinians that this conflict must come to an end – that they are not building a state to continue the conflict with Israel, but to end it.”
And still President Abbas will not say those six simple words.
Instead of President Abbas saying the six simple words, he has instead petitioned the United Nations to unilaterally declare a Palestinian State this coming September and has also made a deal with Hamas, which never changed its genocidal, anti-Semitic charter which invokes the deceits of the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion — blaming Jews for all the ills of the world. Hamas' declared intention is to destroy Israel and kill her Jewish citizens.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center is launching its powerful new Six Words Campaign with a two-pronged effort which will help set the record straight about what it will really take to bring peace to the Middle East and to pressure world leaders to finally hold the Palestinian leadership accountable for their adherence to terror and hate.
Time and again, the international community rewards the Palestinians for contributing nothing to peace. And at every turn, Israel is confronted on the diplomatic, academic, and NGO fronts with an array of campaigns de-legitimizing her, accompanied by escalating demands for calamitous one-sided 'painful' concessions that would endanger her citizen's safety and freedoms.
With immense changes sweeping across the Middle East, we are all hopeful that citizen uprisings of the so-called Arab Spring will yet bring forth real reform that provide real freedoms and bolster the values of tolerance and equality for all peoples — including embattled Christian minorities.
But when it comes to the Palestinian narrative, very little seems to have changed.
The world must urge the Palestinians that they too will have to make 'painful concessions' if they are serious about establishing a state. The Arab people must reject their leaders who continue to offer a future built on little else than hatred of their Jewish neighbors.
Our new Six Words Campaign will urge world leaders to drop the outrageous and dangerous double standards that make unreasonable demands from Israel while never holding Palestinians responsible for demonizing their Jewish neighbors and empowering Hamas. The world, led by the United States and Canada should send the Palestinians an unambiguous message: Want Peace? Say those six words and teach them to your children.
Our strategic effort is zeroing in on three crucial areas:
Say ‘No’ to 1967 Borders
• The notion that pre-1967 Six-Day War borders, even with ‘land swaps’, are viable for Israel’s future must be stopped.
• Called ‘Auschwitz’ borders by Abba Eban, the ’67 lines left Israel perilously under-defended 40 years ago, and with today’s rockets, Israel’s major roads and airports, as well as thousands of homes, schools and hospitals, would be in danger of attack. Indeed, if Israel were to withdraw to the 1967 borders, some parts of the country would only be nine miles wide.
• In 1967, Israel, surrounded by enemies, fought and won the land that many are now calling on to give up. No other nation would give up land they had rightfully won during a war? Only Israel is asked to which is why we say ‘NO” to 1967 borders.
The Right Plan for the Refugees
• Israel can never and will never accept the right of return of Palestinian refugees to Israeli lands. To do so would make Jews a minority in their own nation.
• The demand that Israel absorb 1.3 million Palestinian refugees from camps in the West Bank and Gaza must be stopped.
• Those who believe Israel should be responsible for those 1.3 million Palestinian refugees should consider what happened to the 750,000 Jews who were expelled from Arab lands after Israel's establishment in 1948. Israel didn’t shuffle those Jews into refugee camps. The fledgling and beleaguered Jewish state, with the help of world Jewry integrated those refugees into Israeli society. They created organizations to house them, initiated programs to quickly integrate them into their new home and empower them to become productive members of society.
• The Arab world has utterly failed the Palestinian people. For just a fraction of the hundreds of billions of dollars in oil revenue controlled by Arab countries, every last Palestinian refugee could be re-settled and absorbed into Arab society.
• The SWC is challenging Arab leaders to establish a fund to finally address the Palestinian issue, including integrating fourth generation' refugees into the 21 Arab states and helping others relocate to a Palestinian state after it commits to live in peace with her Jewish neighbor.
Condemn Terrorist Hamas
• Hamas, which controls Gaza and has just signed a unity agreement with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, continues to tell the world they will never recognize the State of Israel.
• Hamas’s founding document blames Jews for the world’s ills and calls for the destruction of the Jewish State. Yet Israel is expected to negotiate with Palestinians who have embraced the terrorist organization.
• The Hamas Charter – which the group has refused to alter in any way in the decades since it was written – is a document that would make Adolf Hitler proud. It accuses Jews of being behind nearly all the world’s ills, including the French Revolution, the Communist revolution, World War I and World War II, going so far as to say, “There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it.”
• The document also declares, “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad…Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it.”
• Hamas publicly mourned for Osama bin Laden after news broke of his death, Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas, stated, “Hamas mourns the death of Osama bin Laden as an Arab Holy Warrior…We ask G-d to offer him mercy with the true believers and the martyrs.”
• Help demand that Hamas is marginalized and treated like the terrorist pariah that it is. There can be no peace in the Middle East as long as the Palestinian people continue to support this terrorist organization. Hamas will never renounce terrorism unless the world forces it to do so.
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